Digital preservation community
Our contributions to digital preservation research and practice
Digital preservation is an emerging discipline globally and the Library has been a consistent contributor to international developments in both research and practice for over a decade. Key achievements and contributions include:
- preservation metadata (in use internationally and which contributed to the de facto standard PREMIS)
- development of the Metadata Extraction Tool (one of the first tools for understanding the internal makeup of a file)
- Rosetta (commercial digital preservation system available internationally as a result of working with Ex libris to develop it) -co-development of the Web Curator Tool (which makes web archiving a desktop/curatorial process rather than an engineer's activity)
- drafted the digital preservation code of ethics (first known code of ethics for this domain)
- contributions to many community standards and works, including PREMIS metadata, the METS schema, the digital preservation storage criteria, levels of digital preservation.
We participate in many digital preservation organisations, collaborations, working and interest groups. A few of these are highlighted on this page.
International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC)
The National Library of New Zealand is a committed member of the international web archiving and digital preservation community.
We are a member of the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC). The IIPC is, a global network of experts archiving the web for future generations. The IIPC’s core objective is to ‘work collaboratively, within each country's legislative framework, to identify, develop and facilitate implementation of solutions for selecting, harvesting, collecting, preserving and providing access to Internet content’.
The IIPC is dedicated to:
- improving the tools, standards and best practices of web archiving
- promoting international collaboration, and
- the broad access and use of web archives for research and cultural heritage.
Our involvement with the IIPC
We have archived websites since 1999 and the New Zealand Web Archive, our collection of archived New Zealand and Pacific websites, continues to grow.
We have been involved in many of the IIPC projects over the years. An example is the Web Curator Tool (WCT), a tool for acquiring web material.
The IIPC is led by a Steering Committee that provides strategic direction. The National Library of New Zealand was recently voted on to the Steering Committee.
The National Library of New Zealand successfully hosted the 2018 International Internet Preservation Consortium General Assembly (GA) and Web Archiving Conference (WAC) in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand (12–15 November 2018).
International Internet Preservation Consortium
Rosetta User Group
The National Library uses Ex Libris’ Rosetta software for its digital preservation repository. We participate with other institutions using Rosetta within the user group to:
- give advice and guidance to Ex Libris on the direction and activities relating to Rosetta
- contributes to a forum for information sharing, discussion and collaborative analysis and assessment of the development of Rosetta
- ensure that Rosetta development continues to meet the needs of the Rosetta user community and potential new customers.
The Rosetta User Group has 4 sub-groups that manage the enhancement and development of specific aspects of shared operational practice. We participate in all of these working groups. The groups are described below.
- System Operation Working Group — focuses on issues related to the way Rosetta operates and how data moves through the system
- Delivery & Integrations Working Group — focuses on issues related to traditional ideas of digital asset management such as delivery and access rights
- Digital Preservation Working Group — focuses on practices of long-term digital preservation and data archiving
- Format Library Working Group — focuses on operating procedures and workflows of the Rosetta Format Library
Working with Archives New Zealand
We are currently working with Archives New Zealand to support the preservation of the digital public records in line with the Public Records Act 2005. We work together where we can, for example, we have shared digital preservation policies and strategies, and share a Rosetta-based digital preservation repository.